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Voice: This is Blah
Blah Couriers. We have a parcel for you. Where does your house come exactly?

Me: Do you know Saint
Micheals School? From there you take the first right and then ask around.

Voice: Ask what?

Me: You can ask for me,
the name in the courier. Haven’t you heard of me?

Voice: (pauses to read
name on parcel) No sir.

Me: I’m an
internationally famous* author. (*in
my house only.)

Voice: Sorry. Never
heard of such a name.

Me: I’m a big doctor
and all, you know.

Voice: No sir. Never
heard of you.

Me: You must be new to
this town. I’m actually a big celebrity in…

Voice: OH WAIT! This
is that beagle’s house. I’ve been here. You are that fat guy who was trying to
chase that funny beagle after it stole your chappal. Hahaha… yes yes. Now I got
it.

Me: ….

Voice: Hello? Hello?
Anybody there?

Me: (in a low menacing
voice) Just bring the damn parcel!

Snoopy completed one year at our house last week. We have had pet
dogs for nearly 27 years as far as I can recall, each with their own unique
personality traits and yet nothing like this guy.

Snoopy came to us at a time of despair when we had lost a
lot in our lives and the recent loss of 14 year old Ruby had all but devastated
us. We needed someone to love and bring laughter back into our lives and where
our own species proved less reliable, this petulant four legged dynamo took up
the challenge. Right from the beginning, his antics were just hilarious –
he refused to be scared of us and took the warnings of a raised stick as a
playful challenge, running past us to commit the crime once more.

Chappals and laptop adaptors were chewed and
mangled. He would/still does observe the location where my dad rearranges the
soil and places seeds for gardening and waits for him to leave before promptly
going there, digging up the seeds and placing my dad’s cap/muffler inside that
spot.

He’s eco-friendly too. You can’t dispose of anything from the house. He immediately assumes that we are playing fetch with him and hence it becomes his new toy. I’d already shared the video of “the tree” with you all… there’s also the curious incident of the dog who walks around the house with a paint bucket to add to that now!

One easy way to identify him is of course, by the presence
of a chew toy bone in his mouth. Where ever he walks, he carries it with him as
though he were an aristocrat with a smoking pipe in his mouth. The only thing
missing is a silk bathrobe I guess! My parents found it hilarious how every
evening he would turn up at my dad’s feet demanding to have an apple. I found
it cute… till I realized he knew I was a doctor! The “apple a day…” bit does
not seem amusing to me anymore and seems like a subtle threat in fact now!!

And so it finally begins.
The FIFA 2014 World Cup is finally here and if you thought IPL got people excited, you have to see the frenzy here in Kerala. Flags of Brazil and Argentina are flying high and banners proclaiming allegiance to Italy and England are visible across many streets.

This time around, I'm personally not so confident about who is gonna win the cup - there are many underdogs who are performing well and a few heavyweights who seem to be faltering as the countdown to the tournament begins. Is it going to be the consistency of a group effort ( a la Spain in 2010 / Italy in 2006 ) or the magic of an individual ( Ronaldo in 2002 / Baggio in 1994 ) that will be the decisive factor in this one?
Teams I've got my eyes on include:

Germany ( Consistent performers, ruthless attacking line up. )

Brazil ( Better suited to home conditions than Europeans, good attacking line up. )

Spain ( Winners of Euro 2008, FIFA 2010 and Euro 2012.)

Netherlands ( Always under-performing... perhaps their time has come. )

Argentina ( Again, a formidable attack. )

Wild cards: France, Portugal, Uruguay, Belgium.

It says a lot that I'm not considering the two World Cup winners from the Group of Death, namely Italy and England. The fact is their pre-World Cup warm up matches have hardly inspired any confidence even among their own fans.

Anyway, I thought I'd make it fun for all those who drop by the blog and give them something to root for while they cheer their teams. So here are my questions for you:

After a brief hiatus, I'm back on the "my short story got published" bandwagon.

Featured in FirstStep PavingWays﻿ "I - An anthology", this one differs from most of the stories I've written over the last 12 months because it is based on a true story. The publishers looked to see how various authors in India would use the simple premise of the word "I" to narrate a tale (The book cover itself plays upon that theme, with the word "I" shown in various languages).
It seems ironic that it took a long time for me to return back to the 'medical / true story' genre... it was the first genre of mine which had got published back in 2011 ( Chicken Soup for the Indian Doctor's Soul ) and motivated me to carry on writing, leading to more published stories.

"The Girl without a Face" is based on a true story about a young teenage girl I treated in the hospital and how her circumstances, her attitude and her determination affected me as the days progressed. As it is with most medicine based stories, there are no villains here other than circumstances; no heroes here except hope... and the will power of a young girl.

I love that the publishers dedicated individual pages to each author. It would have been so easy to just ignore it (and even the authors themselves) as most Indian anthologies do but to see this is truly heartening for the contributing authors. Perhaps even better is that there is a page dedicated to all the authors in the book at their blog as well.

Every author gets his own page too inside the book... how lovely is that?

As I type this, the book has already gone out of stock at Infibeam which had a slightly better discount, I noticed.

When WriteTribe asked us to choose a Maya Angelou quote as our inspiration to write, for me it was a pretty easy choice to make.

Her recent demise brought her back into the limelight with people waxing eloquent on her impact while others searched online to see who this celebrity was that they had not heard of before or seen on Page 3. That last bit did not really surprise me because Maya Angelou was never a celebrity or diva. She was many things during many phases of her life - author, poet, teacher, night club performer, teacher, freedom fighter - but above all else, she was inspiring.

Like many of the present generation, my first encounter with her name was via an innocuous quote in a magazine many years ago. It was a pretty metaphorical one-liner and made me grin but nothing more back then as I flipped the page.

A few years ago, I came across that line once more. This time though, things were different. I was going through a pretty low phase in my life and was battling issues of trust, faith and hope. I used to be that guy who would always want to please everyone (I blame my over-exposure to loving and selfless dogs for that characteristic. *Looks grumpily at Snoopy chewing his bone beside me*). Sufficed to say, helping everyone blindly was a disastrous policy. Choosing to cut out certain people of my life was a difficult decision... but it was the significance of that particular Maya Angelou quote that really got me wondering during a particularly unending night.